Less a comedian, more an extra from Trainspotting ... Isy Suttie. Photograph: Murdo Macleod

Most performers take a day off in Edinburgh. It's always a conundrum: you're in such a routine that, much as you've been longing to sit around washing socks, eating pasties and watching Jeremy Kyle "like a normal person", when the day comes, you're completely lost. It's Stockholm syndrome with bagpipes. Your routine is the only thing you can control.

I get up at 11, and have fruit and tea. At two, I have two slices of toast: one with hummus, one with avocado and 7 cherry tomatoes. On the walk to my gig at 4pm, I listen to Tom Waits and Erasure at full blast on my iPod, hands in pockets, hood up, gaze vacant to avoid flyerers. Less a comedian, more an extra from Trainspotting.

I buy a bottle of water from Tasty Tatties and apologise for not buying a potato, assuring them that they're probably delicious. Then I get to my venue, say hi to the show preceding mine (I still don't know their names), and cross my fingers there are no stag nights in the audience. Then I take a deep breath and do my show. After the show, of course, it's lager, fags, haggis and oblivion. After the show, nothing matters.

So what to do on my day off? The military tattoo? Watch a show that normally clashes with mine? Cook chilli con carne with added Berocca? No, it has to be Portobello, the sleepy seaside town a stone's throw from the festival. It elegantly sticks two fingers up at us – the paranoid egomaniacs in our sweaty venues – with its motherly chip shops, ancient bingo halls and glittering, slightly menacing arcades where people operate metal claws to win cuddly toys for far less money than it costs to see a show. The toy, normally a horse, speaks when you press a button. And in our dreams, what does the horse say? "Two stars. Try again."